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  • The Problem of the Actress in Modern German Theater and Thought by S. E. Jackson
  • Claire E. Scott
S. E. Jackson. The Problem of the Actress in Modern German Theater and Thought. Camden House, 2021. 246 pp. Cloth, $99.00, EBook, $24.99.

S. E. Jackson's description of the actress as a "layered subject" (8) in her monograph, The Problem of the Actress in Modern German Theater and Thought, is an equally apt description of the book itself, which takes a multidimensional approach to the question of both the symbolic and the physical roles of actresses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jackson argues that actresses during this time were more than just symbolic stand-ins for women more broadly. In addition to this figurative role, Jackson contends, actresses participated in the development of modernist thinking on gender, performance, and subjectivity.

Overall, the narrative of The Problem of the Actress is easy to follow. After outlining the contours of the "woman question" (18) as it relates to the actress's contradictory position as both passive, objectified woman and active, creating artist, Jackson discusses the difficulties faced by [End Page 118] real actresses due to the conflation of the actress with the roles she plays onstage. This sets up Jackson's primary argument, namely, that actresses were more than simply representatives of modernity and modern thought, serving also as interpreters, shapers, and producers of it (75). She deepens this analysis through close readings of the pathologizing and zoomorphic tropes used to describe actresses in contemporaneous theater criticism and in a thorough investigation of the infamous dance sequence in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Elektra (1903).

The well-chosen protagonists of Jackson's story are Gertrud Eysoldt and Tilla Durieux, actresses known for their popularity with audiences and their skill when employing modernist acting techniques. These emblematic figures provide Jackson with direct connections between working actresses and numerous modernist authors and directors, including Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt, Heinrich Mann, Arthur Schnitzler, and Franz Wedekind. While it would be easy to let these more widely known male figures dominate the text, Jackson's feminist intervention is to insist on the centrality of Eysoldt's and Durieux's own writing and reflections within broader intellectual and creative debates. By exploring autobiographies, letters, and other life writing connected to these prominent actresses, Jackson places them (and some of their colleagues) at the center of the development of modernist theater in Germany. In addition to serving as a resource for those interested in gender studies and theater studies, Jackson's unique integration of life writing into her exploration of the actress should serve as a model for future scholars seeking to bring to light the often hidden intellectual and creative contributions of women.

If these actresses are the stars of Jackson's story, the antagonists are Friedrich Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, and even, at times, the women's movement itself, which struggled to reconcile its praise of domestic life and motherhood with the more independent life led by actresses, especially famous actresses. One of Jackson's strengths as a writer is her ability to weave a variety of perspectives and opinions together, thereby providing her readers with a rich account of numerous discourses on the actress during this period. Jackson does an excellent job of not allowing any one group or text to become a straw man for the purposes of making a political point. I, myself, admit to struggling to engage as even-handedly when reading some of the antifeminist arguments that Jackson so deftly contextualizes and critiques here. For example, she weaves Weininger's contention [End Page 119] that women are either passive mothers or dangerous prostitutes into a nuanced discussion of the history of stereotyping actresses as fallen women (21).

In a world in which film acting plays such a dominant role in popular culture, Jackson's book makes the case for considering the feminist potential of stage acting as a kind of "unconventional activism," as something that forces us to acknowledge the messy entanglements between the binaries of performer and performed, subject and object, active and passive (199). This compelling text is written in a clear and accessible style, making...

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